Installing lanim

External dependencies

lanim requires some external programs to function.

FFmpeg

We use FFmpeg to turn a series of images into a video.

You should find out how to install FFmpeg on the official website.

LaTeX

LaTeX is the engine behind text and equations.

Besides LaTeX itself, you’ll need three packages: standalone, amsmath and amssymb.

• Ubuntu:

  sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-extra
  

• Arch:

  pamac install texlive-latexextra
  

• Windows & Mac:

  Download MikTeX here: https://miktex.org/download

(If you know a better way of doing this on Windows and Mac, let me know!)

Python

You need Python 3.9 or higher to use lanim.

We recommend using a virtual environment. Run pip install lanim when you’re inside the venv.

Verify the installation

To make sure you installed lanim correctly, render the smoke test animation.

python -m lanim -o smoke_test.mp4 lanim.examples.hello

You should have a video called smoke_test.mp4 in your current folder:

The default settings are: --width 1280 --height 720 --fps 30. Let’s try better ones:

python -m lanim -w 1920 -h 1080 --fps 60 -o smoke_test.mp4 lanim.examples.hello

Performance

To see how fast animations will render on your machine, render the showcase animation. It’s about a minute long.

python -m lanim -o showcase.mp4 lanim.examples.showcase

Then render the animation again to see how the cache speeds up the rendering.